The New York Times > Arts > Art & Design > Rock, Paper, Payoff: Child's Play Wins Auction House an Art Sale. Published: April 29, 2005 t may have been the most expensive game of rock, paper, scissors ever played. Takashi Hashiyama, president of Maspro Denkoh Corporation, an electronics company based outside of Nagoya, Japan, could not decide whether Christie's or Sotheby's should sell the company's art collection, which is worth more than $20 million, at next week's auctions in New York. He did not split the collection - which includes an important Cézanne landscape, an early Picasso street scene and a rare van Gogh view from the artist's Paris apartment - between the two houses, as sometimes happens.
Nor did he decide to abandon the auction process and sell the paintings through a private dealer. Instead, he resorted to an ancient method of decision-making that has been time-tested on playgrounds around the world: rock breaks scissors, scissors cuts paper, paper smothers rock. In Japan, resorting to such games of chance is not unusual. Mr. Sotheby's took a different tack. As Ms. The Sublime Sci-Fi Buildings That Communism Built.
The House of Soviets in Kaliningrad. Photo by Frédéric Chaubin, from "CCCP: Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed. " The architecture of the Eastern Bloc—a conundrum of impossible complexity, or at least that's what it looks like judging from the daily view of my collection of coffee table books. Yes, that's right, coffee table books. The recent glut of art volumes devoted to Soviet architecture may be surprising to anyone who previously thought "Soviet architecture" had about as much to do with "art" as "Soviet leaders" had to do with "glamour. " Yet here is a whole bookshelf to contradict that view. These are not your parents' dour architecture monographs, complete with such entries as "On the problems of developing the center of Kishinev" or "Approaches to using the vernacular in Tashkent and Navoi" (real items from a 70s-era release) but are lavish, glossy, and handsome.
Up till now, though, we've been talking about the miserable mean of Eastern bloc architecture. The Most Isolated People in the World. The part of the Indian Ocean encapsulated by the eastern shore of India and the shores of Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma) is called the Bay of Bengal (map). The eastern edge of the Bay of Bengal is defined as a set of islands called the Andaman Islands, an archipelago, most of which are under control of India. North Sentinel Island, a small dot of land, is part of the Andaman Islands. North Sentinel Island is set just west of the larger islands in the group, as seen as the red area in the map at the top. (For further context, the island is flagged on the map here – be sure to zoom in.)
Between 50 and 400 people are estimated to live on North Sentinel Island. In 1967, Indian authorities began their first meaningful attempt to engage the Sentinelese by leaving coconuts as gifts on the island’s shores. More recent events strongly buttresses that this decision to cut off hopes of contact is just fine with the Sentinelese. What do we know about the Sentinelese? Dating AKB48: the J-pop cult banned from falling in love. 2inShare Jump To Close A Japanese pop idol, hair freshly shaved to the skin, takes to YouTube and bursts into tears as she begs for mercy over her transgression. "My name is Minami Minegishi of AKB48 Team B," she says, referring to the hugely successful group she became a founding member of seven years ago. "Regarding the article that will be released today, I am so sorry for worrying my band members, fans, staff, family, and everyone else. " She bows in contrition for a full eight seconds — slightly longer than, say, Sony’s Kaz Hirai did when apologizing for the massive PlayStation Network security breach in 2011.
Minami Minegishi had just been accused of having a boyfriend. "As an original member of AKB48, I am supposed to set an example for the junior members," she continues. The article in question came out in the Shukan Bunshun magazine last week, and showed alleged photos of Minegishi leaving the house of boy band member Alan Shirahama. Minami Minegishi just turned 20 years old. For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War II. Siberian summers do not last long. The snows linger into May, and the cold weather returns again during September, freezing the taiga into a still life awesome in its desolation: endless miles of straggly pine and birch forests scattered with sleeping bears and hungry wolves; steep-sided mountains; white-water rivers that pour in torrents through the valleys; a hundred thousand icy bogs.
This forest is the last and greatest of Earth’s wildernesses. It stretches from the furthest tip of Russia’s arctic regions as far south as Mongolia, and east from the Urals to the Pacific: five million square miles of nothingness, with a population, outside a handful of towns, that amounts to only a few thousand people. When the warm days do arrive, though, the taiga blooms, and for a few short months it can seem almost welcoming. It is then that man can see most clearly into this hidden world–not on land, for the taiga can swallow whole armies of explorers, but from the air.
She will not leave. Anon. The World's Smallest Book - a large print edition by Robert Chaplin. GREAT WORK EVERYONE! 'Teeny Ted' is successfully funded and now we can have a little fun. I've added a stretch goal! School libraries need help! Check the backers rewards to see how you can participate and donate copies of 'Teeny Ted', in your name to help libraries raise money. See the new $75 Pledge for details.
Lets have fun and make a LARGE PRINT edition of the world's smallest book. The Typeface of 'Teeny Ted From Turnip Town' is puzzle which presents an entertaining challenge! Your involvement will be rewarded. Re: The world's smallest book ‘Teeny Ted From Turnip Town ’. To give you a sense of scale, the array of tablets you see on the surface of this chip would all fit on the cross section of a human hair ! Re: THE GUINNESS WORLD RECORD, and how I got the idea to do this project. Re:‘Teeny Ted From Turnip Town ’Teeny Ted a wild rhyme by Malcolm Douglas Chaplin. The Typeface of 'Teeny Ted From Turnip Town' is puzzle which presents an entertaining challenge ! Ten Counting Cat. Russia declassifies deposit of impact diamonds.
NOVOSIBIRSK, September 16 (Itar-Tass) — Russia has declassified a large deposit of super hard diamonds which are twice harder than usual ones. The sensational statement was made by Novosibirsk scientists of the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The deposit is located on the border of the Krasnoyarsk region and Yakutia in the Popigai crypto-explosion structure- a hundred kilometres’ meteorite crater formed 35 million years ago.
Back in the 1970s, Soviet geologists discovered there the first extra hard "diamonds" - impact diamonds having unusual features. They were two times harder than regular ones and had a different structure. But due to the fact that at that time the government decided to develop construction of plants to produce synthetic diamonds, any studies stopped, and data on the field were classified. After the declassification, geologists were able to return to studies of this mineral.
World's first colour film footage viewed for first time. 12 September 2012Last updated at 13:20 ET The world's first colour moving pictures dating from 1902 have been found by the National Media Museum in Bradford after lying forgotten in a tin for 110 years "It's very significant indeed, it's the world's first natural colour film and the fact that it's a Brit who invented it is fantastic. " Bryony Dixon, curator of silent film at the British Film Institute (BFI) National Archives, said the 1902 footage was of international significance for the cinema world.
"There's something about watching film in colour that deceives you into believing it's more real, so to see this from 110 years ago adds something very substantial. "It's really quite beautiful. " The films were made by Edward Raymond Turner from London who patented his colour process on 22 March, 1899. 'Strange format' Miss Dixon said the footage itself had been known about for some time, but the ability to now watch it was groundbreaking. 'Myth busting' "Then we saw it on screen.
Termites explode to defend their colonies. R. Hanus Older worker termites of Neocapritermes taracua (top right and bottom right) develop blue pouches that can explode to harm their enemies. The yellow-headed termite is a soldier. A species of termite found in the rainforests of French Guiana takes altruism seriously: aged workers grow sacks of toxic blue liquid that they explode onto their enemies in an act of suicidal self-sacrifice to help their colonies (see video). The “explosive backpacks” of Neocapritermes taracua, described in Science today1, grow throughout the lifetimes of the worker termites, filling with blue crystals secreted by a pair of glands on the insects' abdomens. “Older individuals are not as effective at foraging and nest maintenance as younger workers,” says Robert Hanus, who studies termite biology at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry in Prague, and led the study.
But when the workers are attacked, he says, “they can provide another service to the colony. Abraham Lincoln Filed a Patent For Facebook First. UPDATE: Many folks soon started to call out St. Pierre for fabricating this story, including Jason Kottke, and we now know for sure that this story was a fake. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.
Intrepid reporter (or just nosey historian) Nate St. Pierre did some digging in the grand old town of Springfield, IL where he took a tour of the Lincoln Museum and stumbled onto the “Springfield Gazette”, which was a paper entirely about Abraham Lincoln: The whole Springfield Gazette was one sheet of paper, and it was all about Lincoln. Yep, this sounds familiar. Lincoln tried to patent this system for updating people, but was rejected: Lincoln was requesting a patent for “The Gazette,” a system to “keep People aware of Others in the Town.” Could you imagine every single person in your town having their own newspaper? Ian Usher, The Man Who Sold His Life On eBay After A Divorce, Finds Love And Buys A Caribbean Island.
In 2008, after his marriage fell apart, a heartbroken Ian Usher auctioned off his whole life on eBay. For $305,000, he sold his car, his motorbike and his house -- with everything in it. "I have had enough of my life! I don't want it anymore," Usher, who was living in Perth, Australia at the time, wrote in the auction description. Packing up a few possessions, Usher -- who is originally from Darlington, England -- decided he would make a fresh start, traveling the world armed with nothing but his passport and a bucket list of 100 goals, WA Today reports. Four years on, Usher has much to smile about. The man who quite literally bid his old life adieu has found a new one -- complete with a new love and his very own Caribbean island. Setting himself the task of achieving 100 goals in 100 weeks, the 48-year-old former jet-ski instructor has (almost) done it all, the Press Association reports. He's run with bulls, dived with great white sharks, learned to fly and even joined the Mile High Club.
This Bird can copy the sound of everybody including Human - LyreBird. Mapping the Republic of Letters. About the Project Before email, faculty meetings, international colloquia, and professional associations, the world of scholarship relied on its own networks: networks of correspondence that stretched across countries and continents; the social networks created by scientific academies; and the physical networks brought about by travel. These networks were the lifelines of learning, from the age of Erasmus to the age of Franklin.
They facilitated the dissemination&emdash;and the criticism&emdash;of ideas, the spread of political news, as well as the circulation of people and objects. But what did these networks actually look like? Were they as extensive as we are led to believe? Nature by Numbers. Mandelbulb: The Unravelling of the Real 3D Mandelbrot Fractal. Opening Pandora's Box For the Second Time ur story starts with a guy named Rudy Rucker, an American mathematician, computer scientist and science fiction author (and in fact one of the founders of the cyberpunk science-fiction movement). Around 20 years ago, along with other approaches, he first imagined the concept behind the potential 3D Mandelbulb (barring a small mistake in the formula, which nevertheless still can produce very interesting results - see later), and also wrote a short story about the 3D Mandelbrot in 1987 entitled "As Above, So Below" (also see his blog entry and notebook).
Back then of course, the hardware was barely up to the task of rendering the 2D Mandelbrot, let alone the 3D version - which would require billions of calculations to see the results, making research in the area a painstaking process to say the least. So the idea slumbered for 20 years until around 2007. Full size shown here. Is this merely a fool's quest? Mandelbulb (order 8) WOW! Resulting renders. Mansion unlocked after 100 years.